Those Silly Babies

Last month we started visiting a local Head Start program.  I went and did a story time for 2 of the classes there.  Generally I would use a theme that I was already doing for story times, but since story time is on a break I decided to use the theme 'Silly Babies.'

The first book that we read was Mustache baby by Bridget Heos.  This book has been a favorite at my house (so much so that we bought our own copy).  Even my husband likes it and he is NOT into picture (or any other books). This is the story of baby Billy who was born with a mustache.  His parents are told that they have to wait and see if it will be a 'good-guy' or 'bad-guy' mustache.  This is a very cute and funny story.

Our second book was Simon Puttock's The baby that roared.  In this story Mr. and Mrs. Deer are unable to have a baby of thier own, but as luck would have it they find one!  However, the poor little baby will not stop roaring.  The Deer send for help but oddly their friends keep disappearing when they are left alone with the baby.  This silly story has a bit of a surprise ending, adults will see it coming, but kids may not.

The third story that we read was The cow that laid an egg by Andy Cutbill.  Poor Marjorie the cow is sad that she cannot do any special tricks like the other cows.  But, when she lays an egg she gets all sorts of special attention.  The other cows are suspicious that the chickens have something to do with this odd event, but they all just have to wait for the egg to hatch to find out what the baby will be.

Since I do my 'on the road' story time much like my in-house story time I took along my ipod.  Sadly the dock quit working (despite the fact it had been fine a few days earlier).  But, as luck would have it, each of the classes that I visited had a dock, which was great as the alternative was using my phone and that speaker is not very loud, or having me sing sans music.  So, there was music and dancing...

We started with the song Shake a Friend's Hand by Carole Peterson.  This is a good group song as it has the kids shaking hands, bumping hips, and scratching the backs of their neighbor.

I had them counting with Mr. Eric and the Learning Groove's 1,2,3, Whee!  This song is very fun as the kids love to throw their hands up into the air and yell 'whee!'  They also get to jump and shake.

I took the library shaker eggs and we sang Shake your boom boom by Angela Russ.  While your 'boom boom' can be anything, we use the shakers and move the shaker a directed in the song, such as up and down, in and out, back and front.

We ended with the 'Banana Chant' or B-Bananas by Carole Peterson that I used all story time session. I enjoy this fun chant and the kids always seem to enjoy it.  It is nice that this version repeats so that the kids can do it once to get the hang of it and then they get to do it again.

Flannel Friday: What color is your underwear?

Our story time theme this week was Underpants, so we had stories all about underwear.  For my flannel story I decided to adapt the book What color is your underwear? by Sam Lloyd.  On its own this is a really cute book.  It has lift the flap pieces that reveal what color underwear different animals are wearing.  The book has rhyming text, but we left that off and just asked each animal 'what color is your underwear?' and once revealed the kids shouted out the color.

I did preface this book with a rule that we should never ask people what color their underwear is, but since our story has animals it is ok to ask them.  (I also prefaced the entire story time with our number one rule that we NEVER show ANYONE our underwear.)

So, this is an easy one when you have the kids helping.  Just ask each animal, 'what color is your underwear?' and then reveal it on the board.  There are several animals, I used the some ones from the book in case I want to use it in the future with the text from the book.  But, you could use any animals that you want.  And looking at it now I really wish I had spiced up the undies some.  How did I forget the glitter?

Here is the horse, turtle, crocodile, and spider.  I gave the spider a web to hide behind, but in the book she is in a cupboard.

On the other side of the board we have the cow, sheep, and elephant.

 

 

Here they are showing off their underpants.

And surprise!  Elephant John forgot to put his on!

The looks on the kids faces when they realized the elephant had no underpants was priceless.  I ended the story by say, 'Oh well, he is an elephant and doesn't need to wear underpants anyway!'

This week's round-up is being hosted by Meghan at Busy Crafting Mommy.  You can find links to all of the past round-ups with Anne at Sotomorrow, or you can click the Flannel Friday link at the right to find all posts on Pinterest.

Underwear in the library!

I finally did it, an entire story time dedicated to Underwear!  It was a lot of fun too.  I was a bit worried about offending some people, but all of the parents seemed to enjoy the humor of our theme as opposed to being offended.  We featured the rarely used letter U for Underpants.  I was impressed with my little toddlers as they came up with words like Umbrella, Up, and Underwear.  Once our theme was announced I told them that there was a very important rule, we NEVER show ANYONE our underpants.  Of course they were welcome to tell me if they did wear underpants, which many were excited to share.  I also took the opportunity to plug our collection materials for potty training for anyone who might be interested in wearing underpants.

The first book that we read was Aliens love underpants by Claire Freedman.  This is a cute book about why your underpants may go missing - aliens like to take them!  The story is told in rhyme, though sometimes it is a bit stretched.  The whimsical illustrations are very colorful and feature aliens doing all kinds of silly things with the underpants.  One great feature of this book is its end papers (any KSU alums out there?).  There are all sorts of colorful undies to look at on the end pages of this book.  That in itself was a fun thing for the kids.  This author also has a book titled Dinosaurs love underpants, which is just as silly, but ends with the dinosaurs killing each other in a war over underpants - good for the cavemen, not for story time.

Our second book was Brian Sendelbach's The underpants zoo.  Another cute book with rhyming text, this one features a zoo where all of the animals wear underpants.  I like this silly story that features lions, elephants, and monkeys in colorful underpants.  A favorite was the crocodile in pink frilly undies and the penguins wearing icicle laden boxers.

The final underpants story was What color is your underwear by Sam Lloyd.  This a a fun lift-the-flap book, but I turned it into a flannel board.  The book would be great on its own, but with the toddlers I have found flannel boards are a big hit and this book lent well to that.  I did have to preface this book with another rule: we never ask people what color their underwear is.  But, since our story has animals, it is ok.  So, then I had all of the kids help me ask each animal, 'what color is your underwear?'  Then they would tell me the color.  The best part was the confused faces at the end when the elephants forgot to put his underwear on!  You can read more about the flannel board here.

Since there are really no good songs about underpants that I can use in story time, we just did some favorites and silly songs.  We sang Row, row, row by the Old town school of folk music.  This is a great re-make of the classic where the kids row, twist, bounce, rock, and tickle in their boats.

We re-visted The Wiggles' Shake your sillies out from a few weeks ago.  Kids don't mind repeating, especially when they get to use the shaker eggs.

I did make up an underpants-ish song.  We turned Head, shoulders, knees, and toes into Head, shoulders, knees, and underpants.  And the second verse was eyes and ears and mouth and underpants.  This got lots of giggles from the kids as well as the parents.

Our final song was Sue Schnitzer's All the fish.  This is a fun song with various water creatures and each verse ends with a literal 'splash!'  One adorable little boy burst into giggles and jumped with each splash.

This week's craft was a cute peek-a-underpants sheep that I found.  The original craft can be found here at librarianmade.com.  There was no template that I could find, so I made my own sheep.  Here are the pictures, you may be able enlarge it to use.

Flannel Friday: A Crazy, Confused Christmas

So, this week I ended up writing my own Flannel Story.  I just wasn't finding much that I really wanted to 'flannelize' for a holiday story time, so I made up my own.  It is just a silly story - kind of Dumb Bunnies-ish - about a family that has a little trouble decorating the Christmas tree.

Feel free to change the script to fit your needs.  I am not for memorizing stories.  I find that it is just too hard to memorize a script word for word.  If you mess up any word you get lost, tongue-tied, blank out, whatever.  My advice, and what I do, is to know the story really well and then ad-lib as you go.  This also allows you to play to the crowd, or not if they aren't going for that.  I will repeat a refrain if it is relevant, but in general I just make sure I know the story and put all the flannel pieces in the order needed to be my prompts.  Ok, end of advice, here is my story:

It is finally December and time for the Dippies to put up the tree.  Father Dippie brought it up from the basement and proudly set it up in the living room.

'Oh dear,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
So, Father Dippe twisted and turned, as set the tree up again.

'Hmmm, still not quite right,' said Mother Dippie.
So, Father Dippie twisted and turned some more and...

 I forgot to take a picture of the upright, bare tree, but I'm sure you get the idea of what it should look like here ;)

 

'Just right!' said Mother Dippie.  'Now, we must decorate the tree!  Who has the ornament box?'
'I do!' said Sister Dippie.  And she quickly decorated the tree.

'Oh my,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
'I'll fix it,' said Brother Dippie.  And he took off the socks and re-decorated the tree.

'Good grief!' cried Mother Dippie.  'Not your briefs, we need the fancy Christmas balls.'
'I'll get them,' said Father Dippie.  He removed the underpants and put up the balls.

'Hmmm,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still not quite right.  Santa will want to play if he sees that tree.'
'Santa!' Brother and Sister exclaimed.  They rushed off and came back to decorate the tree once more.

'Well, said Mother Dippie, 'that does look more festive, but something is not quite right.'  The family put their heads together, searched the house, and finally finished the tree.

'It's beautiful,' the all agreed.  'But,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still, not quite right.  The tree needs light!'  So, the Dippies, clapped, and clapped their hands.  (Clap your hands.)  Nothing happened, so the clapped some more.  (Clap again.)  Still nothing happened.  They need your help.  Clap as loudly as you can.  Clap, clap.  Then...

'Yay!!!!!' cried the Dippies.  'The perfect tree at last.'
'But you know,' said Brother Dippie, 'I like this tree best of all!'

The green tree is made from craft foam and then I used transparency sheets to lay on top of the tree.  There is a pieces of fuzzy velcro at the top of the tree and a 'sticky' pieces on the back of each transparency sheet.  I made sure that they were hidden by the tree topper.

Also, the 'final' tree has a strand of lights that light up.  I found these at Hobby Lobby, but I am sure you could find them many places.  It is meant to be a necklace and I bought them to put on t-shirts for my kids.  So. I borrowed one for story time.  If you can't find one, you could just leave off the clapping part, or have them clap at the success of the Dippies.

Can you tell that I need to do laundry at my house?  The sock tree (and probably the whole story) was actually inspired by my kids who put their socks on my Christmas tree this week.  Ironically they were Christmas socks, but they were also used socks.  The good news is that I am officially done with my MLIS coursework and I get to graduate!  YAY!!!!!!!  (I just got the e-mail from my advisor today so I am a bit giddy.)  So, now there will be more time for laundry.

If you are looking for this week's Holiday Flannel Extravaganza, you can find it at Loons and Quines.  Past Round-Ups are at SoTomorrow, or you can click the Flannel Friday button to the right to see all the posts on Pinterest.